Saturday, October 08, 2016

Trump is Terrible but Pence May Well be Worse

By Eric Segall

Donald Trump is certainly
terrible but Mike Pence may well be worse. Whereas Trump wears his Neanderthal sexism
on his sleeve slobbering over women wherever he slinks, Pence has an actual history
of advocating for and signing horrific anti-

women legislation and
being notoriously anti-science (actually anti-21st century). Folks certainly don’t need an additional reason
to vote against Trump, but if they do, keeping Pence from ever again holding an elected position at the federal level provides the strongest of justifications.

Pence’s career-long
crusade against equality for women actually began before he held public office. As a talk radio host in the late 90’s, Pence wrote an op-ed about
seeing the movie Mulan with his children. According to Pence, the Disney
movie, about a young girl who becomes a successful warrior, was thought up by “some
mischievous liberal at Disney [who] assumes that Mulan’s story will cause a
quiet change in the next generation’s attitude about women in combat and they
just might be right.” Pence thought it ludicrous that despite “her delicate
features and voice, Disney expects us to believe that Mulan’s ingenuity and
courage were enough to carry her to military success on an equal basis with her
cloddish cohorts.” He concludes with these thoughts about the relationship
between the sexes: “many young men find many young women to be attractive
sexually. Many young women find many young men to be attractive sexually. Put
them together, in close quarters, for long periods of time, and things will get
interesting. Just like they eventually did for young Mulan. Moral of story:
women in military, bad idea.” My moral, Pence is the most sexist film critic in history.

As a member of the House
of Representatives, Pence conducted a one man war
against Planned Parenthood. He sponsored the very first House Bill to defund
Planned Parenthood and kept at it obsessively until it passed the House in
2011. He said
at the time, "If Planned Parenthood wants to be involved in providing
counseling services and HIV testing, they ought not be in the business of
providing abortions. As long as they aspire to do that, I’ll be after
them." He also fought
for a federal personhood bill called the “Life at Conception Act,” which would
mandate that life begins at

conception for all fifty
states and millions of American women. And, just to add more cruelty and 18th
century values to his resume, Pence also cosponsored
a bill that would have redefined rape, preventing federal funds from paying for
abortion except in cases of “forcible rape.”

As Governor of Indiana,
Pence has advocated for and signed eight anti-abortion laws in four years. In
addition to trying to make it as hard as possible for women to be able to pay
for abortions, Pence signed a truly cruel bill
that prohibited abortions if the woman’s decision was based on the race,
gender, or disability of the fetus,
and applied criminal punishments to doctors who assisted in any such abortion.
Imagine being pregnant and told that your fetus has a serious fetal abnormality,
and now learning that if you make the decision to abort, you may well be
breaking the law and your doctor may go to prison. Thankfully, and mercifully, a
federal court has already enjoined
the law from taking effect.

Pence has also advocated
against LGBTQ rights. Despite being warned again and again that a purported “religious
liberty” bill was actually a “discriminate against gay people” bill in
disguise, Pence signed
the law in March, 2015. As a member of Congress, he supported a constitutional
amendment banning gay marriage saying
he wanted to protect “God’s plan,” and opining that “societal collapse was always
brought about following an advent of the deterioration of marriage and family.”
Pence felt so strongly that gay people shouldn’t get married that he signed a law
in 2013 as Governor making it a felony for same-sex couples to apply for a marriage license.” This man is not only against same-sex marriage, he is against people who are in favor of same-sex marriage. In other words, he is a classic bigot.

I could go on and on but
to even pretend to be able to catalog all of Pence’s anti-gay, anti-women past,
would be disingenuous because I would need around 10,000 words (at least). But,
I would be committing blog malpractice if I didn’t also mention that, not only
does Pence not believe
in evolution, of course, but he also has “impeccable political evangelical
credentials, having chaired the Republican Study Group, a coalition of
conservative House Republicans,” according
to a Christian website. In other words, and to be crystal clear, despite what the media is concluding from Pence's moderate debate behavior, the man is an extreme right-wing politician even by right-wing conservative standards. He is, quite simply, an extremist.

There may be some doubt about what policies Trump would
support as President but there is none about Pence. He is vehemently and openly
anti-choice, anti-gay, anti-science, anti-women, and, even, apparently,
anti-Disney. As I said at the outset, Trump is terrible, but Pence may well be worse.

3 comments:

One can debate policies, but the "anti-woman" tag goes beyond his position on abortion.

Anyway, the post focuses on policy. On policy, it's possible he can be worse than Trump. This is unclear though -- e.g., Trump's comments on various issues sound fairly reckless, including foreign policy. Also, Trump's personal failings will likely result in problems since part of being President is personal, particularly the "head of state" role. Finally, his recklessness, lack of knowledge and/or willingness to take the time to think them out etc. is simply put scary.

Pence is bad in various ways but meets bare minimum levels of credibility for POTUS that Trump does not. That bare minimum is far from enough & I don't think Pence is really a serious candidate for 2020. But, I can see Republicans hopeful he would be on the top of the ticket so they can lose with some pride intact.

I'm not shocked to learn that you think a social conservative would be worse than Trump. I don't understand the value in trotting out these tired points. If a person is considering voting for Trump, I don't believe that Pence's views is going to turn them away. I was surprised to learn that Pence supposedly made it a felony for same-sex couples to apply for a marriage license. But of course, upon googling, I discovered that's not what he did. The law already existed to penalize putting false information on a marriage license application. The amendment lowered the penalty for doing so. Because there are spaces for a "female" and a "male" applicant to put their names, a same-sex couple would arguably violate the law. That's not a foregone conclusion, as was reported by many sources, but it is arguable. Yet, that was the case BEFORE Pence's amendment to lower the penalty. Out of this, however, you insist that Pence is a "classic bigot." When every conservative is painted as a bigot, it is no wonder that so many roll their eyes at criticism of Trump.